Adventures in Stall Rest

January 14, 2013 Lauren Mauldin Comments 2 comments

Only 3 and a half weeks of stall rest left… boy is that going to fly by. I haven’t had the heart to tell Simon that even when we hit month 2 of rehab, he only gets to go on 5 minute walks a day and still no turnout. My baby boy is not taking all this extremely well.

Simon is a horse that loves to work and be with people, so when I’m out at the farm he seems okay. I visit every other day or so to take him out of his stall to groom him and hand graze him if he’s being quiet.

To try and combat both his and my boredom, I’m doing some research in Equine Massage. Nothing crazy (one video I watched showed a cowboy punching his horse HARD in the shoulders… I don’t think I’ll be doing that), but just some purposeful petting to maybe relax him a bit. Below is the video tutorial I liked best (it’s short if you’re interested).

I tried yesterday with mixed results. He liked a small amount of the neck massage and did a lot of stretching down and licking/chewing at one point. On the other side of his neck and when I massaged his crest he did a lot of walking around and acting annoyed. It’s hard for me to tell if that’s partially because he’s super amped up from stall rest or just in general irritable.

His favorite was me massaging his left hind muscles. I got lots of yawns and very sleepy eyes during that part, which I tried to show in this bad photo.

What the lady says in the video but I wasn’t prepared for, is just how easily you can feel knots and bumps in your horse’s muscles when you are looking for it. So if nothing else, working in some basic massage for him gave us something to do and more time out of the stall for him. I’m going to do more research and maybe get a book about some different techniques, but the next step on my conquer stall rest plan is to try and get some hay nets to slow his eating down. Overall he’s doing OK, but I need to think of anyway I can lessen his anxiety and overall boredom.